Technical support must be a top priority for any serious Web host reseller.
Consumers, especially individuals and small businesses expect timely and
informative customer support. Noting that the majority of a reseller's
clients come from this constituency, support must be a central tenant of a
vendor's offerings. Unfortunately, because most hosting resale operations
are small, often resellers cannot effectively deal with incoming support
requests. The result is usually an unsatisfied client base that does not
obtain timely responses to their support inquiries.
Customer churn occurs when customers cannot obtain a desired level of
technical support. It is thus incumbent upon the reseller to establish
effective and efficient means of providing technical support to their
clients in order to satisfy customer expectations. Resellers can obtain
higher levels of technical support if they outsource their own support
infrastructure. By outsourcing technical support functions, a reseller can
actually reduce customer costs while improving customer satisfaction.
Utilizing customer support outsourcing services allows a reseller to provide
technical support without the headaches or capital expense of developing,
staffing and maintaining an internal help desk. At fast growing Web host
reseller businesses, over 50 per cent of all incoming inquiries can be
support requests. At the smallest of these Web host operations, these
inquiries can detract from other essential areas of business, such as sales
and marketing. By outsourcing technical support, a reseller can increase
the amount of time that they dedicate to the revenue-generating components
of their business.
Sophisticated technical support providers now offer expert support solutions
that can actually expand the complexity and breadth of support operations.
Any basic provider should offer toll-free telephone support and 24-hour
e-mail support inquiries at a minimum. These methods of support inquiries
are the most commonplace in the Web hosting industry. An excellent hosting
provider however should have the capacity to offer help desk support via fax
and by instant messaging. All this support should be "private labelled" as
well, so that assistance provided to your customers is transparent. In
other words, your technical support operator should pick up the phone as
you.
An enhanced technical support provider should also be able to provide highly
personalized service, keeping detailed call histories on the nature and
frequency of support inquiries. Bear in mind that consumers dislike support
lines that are overtly generic. Providers should specialize in call
screening, routing, logging and tracking, and must be able to escalate calls
that meet specific criteria to second tier support specialists or refer
certain calls back to the Web hosting resellers.
Providers should also be able to provide customized activity reporting and
bill the reseller on a per support request basis. Only on a "per-instance"
basis will outsourcing customer support be an affordable proposition to a
smaller Web host vendor. For this reason, resellers must ensure that they
enter into an arrangement with a customer support outsourcer that is
negotiable, short-term and is pro-rated based upon call volume.
Most importantly, outsourced technical support must be specifically tailored
to your service offerings. Your customers will not be impressed with your
technical support simply because it is responsive. Customers must obtain
relevant assistance when they call. This can only be achieved if the
technical support outsourcer has an in-depth understanding of your business
operations.
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